notes: happy Jerza Week 2016, everyone! i can't describe how excited i am to participate this year! i didn't start writing fairy tail until after last year's Jerza Week so with much hip-hip-hooray i partake! but of course, even when I get the prompts with plenty of time, i still fail to pull through on time.
anyway, this is for prompt embrace for Jerza Week 2016:
awkward
She just needs to figure out where to put her arms.
9
When he falls, he falls hard and fast and right into her arms.
"Agh!" he yells, throwing up his arms to reduce his impact. However, nothing is really going to help stop Jellal—who decided to throw himself off into the air at the highest point of his swing to see how far he can fly—and Erza—who just happens to be at exactly where 'how far he could fly' is—from colliding into each other.
And so the physics happen and so as fate would also have it, Erza gets a full dose of Jellal recess break that day at school.
"I'm sorry!" he apologies, quickly pulling himself up. "Are you okay?"
He's also quick to take her hand and help her up, but she picks herself up onto her feet.
"I'm fine," she tells him, brushing dirt and bits of weird playground stuff off her.
"You're Erza, right?" He tries to make eye contact with her, but she's not really ready to introduce herself to her classmate—even if it is already her fourth day at the new school.
"Yeah," she replies nevertheless.
He gives her a wide smile, looking at her for a moment. "I'm going to call you Scarlet," he suddenly declares, almost proudly.
Erza's lips twist. Even as the new kid on the block, it isn't hard to notice that Jellal Fernandes has a tendency to make nicknames for people. Erza hasn't memorized all the names and faces yet, but she's pretty sure his entire group of friends has their own codenames—Sorano is Angel and Erik is Cobra—and she doesn't get exactly what the whole point is.
"You're so weird," she finally blurts.
He laughs twice. "Why?" He doesn't look the least bit offended by her remark. "It's because you have really pretty hair!"
Erza's caught off guard. "My hair?…" she murmurs, unconsciously her right hand twirls her scarlet tresses between her fingers.
His eyes suddenly widen and he points at her right forearm – "Hey!" he exclaims, taking said arm in both hands. "You are hurt. I did hurt you."
Jellal flips her arm around and she sees the small abrasion on her skin.
"It's fine," she tells him.
"I'm really sorry," he apologies, nevertheless, looking her straight into the eyes. "I should be more careful next time."
She isn't really sure what to say. Thank you? She doesn't remember the last time anyone has told her sorry so genuinely. I'm fine? She's never learned to say anything in response.
"Ah, um—" she replies instead, but she forgets everything she's thinking about when he suddenly presses his lips near the scrape and then wraps his arms completely around her, trapping her arms underneath his. He squeezes hard once before releasing her.
Erza is utterly confused. Why is he invading her space and what exactly does he think he's doing by awkwardly kissing her forearm and then hugging her?
"W-Why'd you do that?" she asks him.
"I don't know," he admits. "That's what my mom does when I get hurt."
They exchange a few blinks between each other and before someone calls out for him.
"Jellal! Wanna be It?" Sorano shouts at him, cupping her mouth with one hand and waving at him with the other.
Jellal turns back to Erza. "You should join us!" he suggests, inviting her to their game of tag.
She briefly looks beyond him to see her other classmates and hesitates, shaking her head.
He gives her a small smile. "Okay, maybe next time then," he says, giving her a quick wave goodbye before joining his friends.
Erza doesn't think any more of what has just happened, and when Mr. Makarov finally arrives her side to see if she's alright after "that troublesome Jellal crashed into her," she assures the teacher that she is "fine" and that "Jellal said sorry."
She has other things on her mind for the rest of the day – like getting home in time for the next episode of her favorite TV show or seeing the latest issue of her favorite fashion magazine – than to worry about Jellal Fernandes and his weird antics, but the next day when he shouts for Scarlet to join in the next dodgeball game, she finds herself smiling and joins in.
13
Backstage, it's fairly dark but even in the dusty yellow light, Jellal can very clearly see Erza's costume, and he immediately buckles over, laughing as quietly as he can so as not to disturb the rehearsal on the other side of the curtain.
When he laughs, he laughs hard, and he rolls over onto the hard wood floor, clutching his stomach.
"Stop laughing!" she hisses, feeling her entire face turn hot. She knew he would make fun of her. She furrows her eyebrows, waiting for him to get ahold of himself. "Stop it!"
Eventually his hysterical fit fades off, and he sits up, wiping a tear from his eye. "You look cute, Scarlet," he says.
She feels her face boil hotter and she opens her mouth to admonish him but when she hears Natsu cough into the microphone on the other side of the curtain, she remembers to keep her voice down.
"I thought you were done calling me that after elementary school," she scolds. "We're in seventh grade now."
He gives her a nonchalant shrug. "Does it embarrass you?" he asks her.
She looks him straight in the eye and briefly ponders the question, before realizing that maybe she's more flustered about him calling her cute than calling her Scarlet.
"W-well, yeah," she affirms, and quickly changes the subject. She shoots him a glare. "Well, if anything, you should have been one of the actors—I don't understand why you got to be a techie."
He goes along with her turn in conversation. "This class play is supposed to help us 'branch out of our comfort zones,' remember?" he says, quoting their teacher. "It's just a one-time thing, Erza. You'll be fine."
"I am not fit for the stage. Have you seen me act?"
He looks lazily up at her, smiling again at the costume she's wearing.
"No," he replies. "But I still think you'll be a perfect Tree B."
She sighs with the reminder of her 'acting' role, flapping her hands up and down, rustling the leaves on her arms-now-branches. She shakes her head—the hollow of a tree trunk, the only visible part of her in the costume—to gently itch the uncomfortable fabric circling her face.
"I have to swing my branches around in time with the music," she continues. "And this suit is scratchy and hot and I can barely hear myself think because I'm so nervous—"
"You'll be fine, Erza," he assures her.
"Yeah, but—"
Before she knows it, he's pulled himself up off the floor and has his arms around her, tree costume and all.
She'd hug him back but the branches are a little stiff.
"You'll be fine," he repeats, his voice—although through the fabric of the costume tree trunk—tickling her ear.
"I—" she starts, but is unable to finish. Why is it that whenever he hugs her, she can't figure out how to respond? Why is it that as awkward as she feels in his embrace, it feels just right? She still hasn't figured out what to say to him in these moments—it's been years since they literally bumped into each other in elementary school and yet all she's been able to say to him are scathing remarks—
"—treehugger," she thus jokes.
At this, he chuckles once, releasing her from his embrace. She catches her breath, smelling the shampoo off his hair briefly, but then out of the blue, he steps forward and tucking a fallen strand of her hair behind the seam of her costume.
"I only hug special trees," he tells her.
A moment. Then his ears prick up at the sound of Natsu finishing his monologue—one that took about twice as much time as it should have because, of course, the pink-haired teenager leaves memorization to the last minute—and he nods off in the direction of the stage.
"Well, there's your cue."
"Yeah." She nods and hustles to get into position.
The curtains draw. The backlights flicker. She braces herself as best as she can and tries to concentrate, but all she can think about is how comforting his arms feel.
Despite her distracted thoughts, she is surprised to find that she sways her branches in time with the music and that she does not mess up. Not even once.
18
Jellal doesn't say much of what he's feeling in words, but at least to Erza, his emotion are clear in the way that he shuffles in the hallways to get to his next class or in the way that he smiles with a little more effort when his friends tell him a funny story about their weekend.
Afterschool, she catches him in the parking lot just before he folds himself into the driver's seat to head straight home.
"You didn't get in, huh?" she asks him.
The flicker in his hazel eyes is enough for her to know the answer.
No, he wasn't accepted to that school that he has always wanted to attend—the one that both his parents had graduated from, the one that he has been aiming for since he stepped into high school and got serious about his grades, the one that he's always imagined he would be.
She doesn't know what to say but she feels the overwhelming urge to hug him—it feels like it's the right thing to do—so she does, tiptoeing wrapping her arms around his neck—and only realizes the small miscalculation in her actions.
The embrace feels very awkward, and perhaps it's because it's the first time that she initiated—and well, maybe she's hugging him a little too high and his face, his mouth, his lips are a little too close to her cheek—but she's not going to reshuffle her arms around for the sake of her embarrassment. She quits thinking self-consciously—hugs with Jellal are always a little awkward, even for as long as they've known each other—and squeezes him tightly, as he always has for her when she needed his assurance.
He seems surprised at first but then moves both his arms to return the embrace, putting his arms around her waist and turning his face to the side to fit his chin over her shoulder.
"This isn't the end of the world, Jellal," she says. "Just because you didn't make it doesn't mean that you're a failure."
She feels him clutch her a little tighter.
"Thank you."
And of course, she hugs him again later in senior year when he makes the final decision to attend another school.
Her arms still haven't learned the lesson, and she accidentally finds herself hugging him a little too high again.
He still returns her embrace, all the same.
20
It's only been a year but for some reason he suddenly seems so much more different.
Was Jellal always this tall? Were his shoulders always this broad? Were his eyes always this hazel?
She feels guilty that maybe she's completely forgotten what he looked like since the last time she saw him before he flew himself off out-of-state to university, but then she wonders if maybe all during their time together she never noticed how much he had grown.
Text messages and brief Skype chats—she realizes, as she pulls her phone away from her ear—are not nearly enough to capture the same feelings as having Jellal in person, in front of her.
"He-Hey!" she shouts at him, waving vigorously at him from across the distance at the airport.
She can tell that he's spotted her once his eyes brighten, and keeping her heart as calm as possible, she hangs up their call, pressing the red button with her shaky fingers before slipping her phone back into her pocket and rushing over to meet him.
They reach their arms around to pull each other into an embrace—long overdue—but unfortunately her right arm slips above his left arm and her left arm dips below his right arm and well yes, they're hugging each other, but it's a slightly strange cross-stitch of limbs and their difference in heights make it a little more awkward.
Well, she thinks. When have their hugs never not been awkward?
He laughs, as if he's thinking the same thing, and pulls her in closer.
"Hey," he says. "Missed you."
"Me too," she replies immediately
But these aren't the words that really describe the weight in her heart over this past year, the ache in the middle of her chest that she felt whenever she mused about flying over to visit his campus but realizing that neither of them had the time, the disappointment that formed over her face at the end of the online conversations when both of them had to sleep…
"I think…" she starts, "…I think I love you, Jellal."
She feels him stiffen, then feels him pull back, until his face is just inches apart from her face, his eyes locked in an intense gaze with her eyes, his breath stopped in the middle of her breath.
"Me too," he says.
He blinks. He leans forward, and she finds her eyes closing and her shoulders are tense and her heart races and she is nervous nervous nervous because she thinks he's going to kiss her—but then she feels her cheek rest against his chest and she feels his arms wrap around her tighter and when she opens her eyes she can see the individual stitches at the sleeve of his shirt, a strand of her scarlet hair stuck on the fabric, a white puff of something resting on his shoulder, and she realizes just how close she is to him.
And she very very much likes it this way.
"I love you, too, Erza," he repeats, and she can hear how close he is to her because she can feel the movements of his mouth over the shell of her ear. She feels him turn his face in her direction and when she feels his lips kiss the edge of her jaw, she almost bursts and she forgets exactly how un-used she is to his touch reminding her that they are so much more…
She's a little less awkward in his arms now, but as always, everything feels just right.
sigh. honestly, i don't know what i was planning on doing with this one-shot. there's not really a point to it. it's just fluff, lol. fluff without plot. shame on me.
thir13enth